Energy-Efficient Building Automation Design, Co-Simulation & Analysis

Description

MLE+ is an open-source Matlab/Simulink toolbox for co-simulation with the whole-building energy simulator EnergyPlus. It is designed for engineers and researchers who are familiar with Matlab and Simulink and want to use these software tools in building energy simulation. Our tool provides a control development workflow as well as graphical front-ends for designing advanced control strategies, in which the building simulation is carried out by EnergyPlus while the controllers are implemented in Matlab or Simulink.

We extend MLE+ to provide a built-in cloud interface to execute a large batch of EnergyPlus simulations on the cloud with distinct scenarios, required for performing parametric analysis and global optimization. We also provide Virtual Machine Images (VMIs) which include EnergyPlus and all the software packages and configurations necessary for cloud-based simulations with MLE+. Currently, MLE+ supports the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service; however support for other cloud services will be added in the future.